To read the epilogue of this book about the siege of Jerusalem during the war that created the State of Israel one would almost think it was written today. Unfortunately, it was written in 1972.

“The Arab states displayed no haste to succor their suffering brothers. The Lebanese, afraid that the predominantly Moslem refugees would upset their nation’s delicate balance between Christian and Moslem, persistently refused them. The Egyptians kept them crowded into the Gaza Strip. Syria and Iraq, whose resources made them the countries best equipped to receive the refugees, turned their backs on them. Only Jordan, poorest of the Arab states, made a genuine effort to welcome them into its ranks.”

The balance in Lebanon is today mostly historic. As with the Syrian refugees today, the Jordanians were relatively welcoming. The same cannot be said for Europe’s and the U.S.’ acceptance of Jewish refugees. In 1946 Congress permitted only 4,767 Jewish refugees. Israel was a convenience. Ironically, it is part of Hitler’s legacy.

Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre at the outset of “O Jerusalem” quote from Hebrew Psalm 137, Christian Matthew 23:37, and The Hadith of Mohammed. Each sanctified Jerusalem as an inseparable core of faith, culture and history. It is a pawn in a continuing global power play.

While the book is balanced and does not shy away from the Irgun’s crimes against humanity at Deir Yassin, it is predominantly told from the perspective of the Jews. The Arab sources are principally government and military, without direct narratives from Arab villagers. Both sides suffered from internal infighting and lack of organization. Each were reasonably adept as terrorists, and less so as a military force. In most cases each seem to snatch defeat from victory. The authors consistently attribute the Arab failure to the irregular Arab forces who were more intent on looting then on achieving their intended goal. The Arab leaders were incompetent. Substituting hyperbole for planning. The Arab Legionnaires, substantially backed by the British, are comparatively well-regarded. The Israelis also had their issues with the terrorist Irgun and the Stern Gang. Unlike the more disciplined Palmach, their interest was supplanting the Haganah. This ultimately led to a battle between the two, when Menahem Begin sought to displace Ben-Gurion.

The politics in “O Jerusalem” is the most interesting. The British aligned with the Arabs. They shared a history and oil reserves and the Suez Canal held more sway than Jewish refugees from concentration camps. The U.S. was split. The State Department was against the establishment of Israel. It too had less interest in refugees, particularly given it historic negativity toward Jews. President Truman was indecisive, but as history spun from personalities and accidents, Truman ultimately favored support after meeting with his Jewish partner from his Missouri haberdashery. The U.S. in the end leaned on the British, who at a critical time for the Arabs,agreed to a cease-fire between the combatants and withheld munitions when the Israel was being replenished from desperation to dominance. King Abdullah ibn-Hussein el Hashimi, the King of Transjordan, was not adverse to the State of Israel. In part, because he wanted to consolidate his holdings and obtain a port, and in part, because he did not believe that the other nations (Egypt, Syria, and Iraq) had the capacity to win. Golda Meir and the King met in secret before the war to try to negotiate a settlement. Having successfully raised vital funds for Israel to buy munitions, she could not achieve an agreement, in part due to the Jerusalem issue.

Fiction is often dwarfed by history. In the book the irony and strength of the human condition is illustrated numerous times. The Jewish inhabitants in the Old Quarter, survivors of the death camps, come to Israel for salvation, but during the siege have their rations cut to that which they lived on in the camps. The refugees who sold everything they owned to come to Israel, without knowledge about where they are being sent, and without military training, are sent unprepared into battle to be slaughtered.

The book conveys interesting facts. General Walter Bedell Smith, General Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff during WWII, and other U.S. military officials volunteered to go to Israel to aid it. The Defense Department vetoed the trip. General Smith had been Ambassador to Russia, and was later Director of the CIA and Under-Secretary of State. A traditional Catholic, it is hard to imagine him volunteering without some operational reasons. The authors’ source for this fact is not stated in the notes.

Given the right of return issue, how many Arabs left Jerusalem in the first weeks following partition remains in dispute. The numbers range from 350,000 to 1,000,000. Ben-Gurion had agreed to the return of 100,000 upon the signature of the peace treaty. Some who left were upper and middle class, who went to Lebanon believing it to be temporary and preferring to avoid the fight. Like them but for religious reasons the Orthodox Jewish community had no interest in fighting. They did not, and many still do not, believe Israel is the Jewish State and were relatively comfortable living with their Arab neighbors. Several times they were intent on surrendering Jerusalem and were told by the Haganah they would be shot if they tried to do so. These tensions with certain elements of the Orthodox community still exist. It provides some support to Iranian distinction between Zionism and Judaism from a cultural vantage point.

There is a certain cynicism that comes from reading this history. Is the conflict a mere convenience for States in need of political distraction and markets for weaponry. Can the Arab States afford to have Israel not exist? Will the instability of the Arab States erode the Faustian bargain to the Arab masses?

For Israel the next few years may be its most treacherous. It knows that it cannot rely on any other country, including the U.S., upon which it is dependent. Europe and China need Iranian and other Middle Eastern resources and have no natural lobby for Israel as the U.S. does. Israel’s military superiority while partly a strategic decision of U.S., Europe and Russia is less accountable for its success than the lack of discipline and infighting of the Arab States. It has a temporary reprieve in Egypt and Syria, but that could rapidly change. Demographics are against it. The occasional tolerance that existed between Arabs and the minority Jewish population will likely not return between Palestinians and Israelis. When war is local, the family hatred becomes generational.

“O Jerusalem” is an interesting read and brings perspective to current events.

Marcelo Figueras wrote this coming of age novel about a family caught up in Argentina’s “dirty war” in the 1970s. It is narrated by a ten-year old boy, who with his younger brother and parents must leave Buenos Aires to secretly find residence in a quinta on the outskirts of the city.

It is a child’s story. Although at times the narration is retrospective, evidenced by knowledge beyond that of a little boy, it reflects the resilience of childhood. Children have an amazing capacity to find escape and joy in play, even under the worst of circumstances. The reader, like the children, is not exposed to the fears and risks of the parents. It is a testament to the parents, as reflected through the narration, that the story is told almost as if nothing was transpiring. Mr. Figueras avoidance of the dramatic makes the book that much more compelling. It is structured into sections that are school lessons. A selective chapter within each section is educational: First period is biology; second period, geography; third period, language; fourth period, astronomy, and fifth period, history. For some in middle school, a few of these chapters may be a stretch, but it is worth the exercise.

Kamchatka is an imaginary place that exists only on the board game Risk. For those who remember this game it brings back memories of playing for hours or even days. As a period piece, younger readers might not appreciate this ode to childhood as would an adult. It is not a young adult novel in this regard.

“Kamchatka”begins with a quote from “Moby-Dick”. “It is not down on any map; true places never are.”

This is a book about family relationships and life. It is optimistic and redemptive.

“I believe that stories have no end, because even when one life ends, its energy gives life to others. The dead (remember the larvae) simply nourish the Earth so it can be fruitful and feed those above who, in their turn, will give life by dying. For as long as there is life in the universe, the story of each single life never ends; it is simply transformed. In dying, the life-story undergoes a shift. We are no longer a thriller, a comedy, an epic; we are a geography book, a biology book, a history book.”

… “For our lives are no less important than other lives. On the contrary, our lives appear on the horizon of past lives, the lives that have ceased to be biology and become history, the lives that have cleared the path to the present, which, in that sense, is better than all the past; lives that, just like certain species, trace a path between what was and what is, offer us a bridge across the ravine to the summit of a mountain that is higher than all those that came before, but which is never the last.”

Mr. Figueras wrote “Kamchatka” in 2003 but it was not translated into English until 2010. It reflects an innocence of an earlier period: Risk; King Arthur and his knights; Houdini; comic book heroes when more was left to the imagination. Some experiences remain universal: new kid at a new school; little boys’ fascination with toads; finding a role model in a younger man.

I think this would be an excellent reading choice for a teacher, but I welcome comments about what age it would be best suited for. It is an enjoyable read for adults as well.

Being in Kamchatka reminds me of a quote from Virginia Woolf’s “The Common Reader”.

“The pressure of life when one is fending for oneself alone on a desert island is really no laughing matter. It is no crying one either.”

I struggled with Muriel Barbery’s novel through the first 125 pages. Like “You Deserve Nothing’ it is based in Paris. A concierge and a precocious twelve-year-old resident in a bourgeois apartment each share their ruminations on class, classical literature, art, philosophy and the meaning of life. The concierge masks her superior intelligence for fear of rising above her station, while the child, filled with the angst of an introvert recoils from her family.

The novel is structured like a personal journal, each imparting their “profound” thoughts sequentially. The different font and titling of the chapters helps distinguish who is the narrator.

The arrival of a new resident, a truly wealthy Japanese man, provides the novel with some plot. Both the concierge and the girl find solace in the simplicity of Japanese culture and his unpretentious intellect and demeanor. This is not a book for francophiles.

The prose is not distinguishing and the wisdom is commonplace. It received good reviews, but even as young adult literature it falls short for me. Unlike “You Deserve Nothing” which captures the tension and difficulties of teenagers and expats, I do not know why a young adult would find this novel interesting. Perhaps a pre-teen who aims to impress may be drawn to 12 year-old Paloma.

There is the illusion of fiction and the reality of fact. “You Deserve Nothing” begins as light fare. It is a story revolving around a teacher who is mostly beloved by an otherwise disaffected class of rich ex-pat kids at an international school in Paris. A “To Sir With Love” for latch-keys Mr. Silver Socratic teaching of Sartre, Camus, and the Old Testament, challenges his self-absorbed, or otherwise ignored, literature senior seminar class to question themselves and life. He is adored by the girls, and admired by most of the boys. He treats them as if they were adults, ignoring some institutional rules. The story is conveyed through three narratives: Mr. Silver, and two of the students, Marie and Gilad. Different perspectives of the same events are conveyed directly by these narrators, and other subordinate characters.

Heroes are defined within boundaries. The class comes to understand this as they ultimately realize Mr. Silver has his limitations. It is a coming of age story that is best told through Gilad, although the plot develops around Mr. Silver’s affair with Marie. Alexander Maksik, who had a Teaching/Writing fellowship from the Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, is non-judgmental in this debut novel. He permits the reader to draw their own conclusions about the characters and morality. Some of his choices are surprising, refusing to take the easy route.

By the conclusion you realize this book is more than crudités. It would make an excellent young adult reading choice for middle class and upper class kids. I don’t believe that most inner city poorer kids would be able to relate to it and might, like the character Ariel, believe the whole thing is crap. Whether it is or isn’t is a thematic matter of perspective. I doubt schools would make it assigned reading given the relationship and in some districts, its intellectual exploration of faith.